


Net Loss Zero

by midnightsnapdragon



Series: Lessons in Good Sportsmanship [2]
Category: The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Ping-Pong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26722591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightsnapdragon/pseuds/midnightsnapdragon
Summary: Paige wins a ping-pong match.
Relationships: Paige Mahoney/Warden | Arcturus Mesarthim
Series: Lessons in Good Sportsmanship [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944838
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Net Loss Zero

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about how ping-pong tournaments/contests/championships actually work, but since you, in all probability, don't either, I’m not going to fuss.
> 
> Enjoy!

“You again?” Paige says, in disbelief.

Nobody hears her. It’s already quite loud in the arena, with spectators flooding by the tens and hundreds into the bleachers, so it’s no wonder that none of the Rephaite players catch what she says; they’re all standing in a huddle, listening to their stone-faced leader, probably going over some last-minute strategy.

The tallest of them, however – the one known in the leagues as the Warden – glances over his shoulder. He meets Paige’s eyes for the briefest second and gives her a nod.

Then he turns back to the huddle.

“Them again?” Eliza echoes, showing up on Paige’s left in her Seals uniform. She looks similarly offended by the Rephaim’s presence. “Jax promised we wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.”

“He doesn’t have every championship coordinator in his pocket," Paige observes, not without regret.

“Clearly. Look at them, it’s ridiculous.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re bloody giants. They should be wrestling, not playing ping-pong.”

A white-gloved hand comes down on Eliza’s shoulder.

“There, my dear Muse, you are wrong.”

Paige nearly jumps out of her skin. Eliza, who must have an underdeveloped survival instinct, freezes instead. The hand belongs to Jaxon Hall, and he has – predictably – shown up to the finals looking like a Chicago mafia man out of the fifties. He turns a pale, frigid smile first on Eliza, then on Paige.

“The Rephaim may be ogres blessed with unnecessary muscles and a vertiginous outlook on life, but they are not giants, sweet Eliza. They are freaks of nature.” He pronounces _blessed_ like it has two syllables. “I wouldn’t wish such a stature on my worst enemy. Do you think any of them can go about in London without being stalked by every busybody with half a mind to lay their hands on a walking laboratory experiment?”

Eliza blinks. “What?”

“Laboratory experiment?” Paige repeats.

Jaxon smiles beatifically.

“Have faith, my darlings. After today, _we_ shall be the giants of the ping-pong world – not they.” He flings a disdainful look at their rival team, which has broken up the huddle and begun to do stretches. “I ought to go enlighten them of the fact. Excuse me.”

Paige and Eliza mutely watch him stride into the Rephaim’s midst, bold as you please, and address their coach: a formidable-looking woman with burnished bronze skin and hair shorn close to her jaw. Terebell Sheratan used to scare the living daylights out of her opponents back when she played ping-pong herself; now she scares the living daylights out of rival coaches. Not Jaxon, though. He’s perfectly at ease where he stands, impertinently slouched over a cane he doesn’t need, provoking a woman who could squash him between thumb and forefinger. He looks like he could do this all day.

Terebell looks like she hates him for every second.

Around her, the Rephaite players don’t spare Jaxon a second glance; they’re busy stretching and talking to one another under the roar of the crowd. Paige watches the Warden roll his powerful shoulders, then link his arms behind his back and pull them taut. Briefly she wonders if she would be as intimidating as he is, if she just had his musculature – but he has a foot and a half on her. She could be John Cena and _still_ not be able to beat him in a fistfight.

Damn.

“Is Jax about to make our lives harder?”

Nick has appeared on Paige’s right, a furrow in his brow. He, too, evidently smells trouble in the way Jax is badgering Terebell – now leaning into her bubble of space, now gesticulating artfully with his cane. Once it narrowly misses Terebell’s nose; she doesn’t so much as flinch.

“When is he ever not,” Paige mutters.

“You ready?” Eliza asks Nick, nudging him with her shoulder.

“Pretty much. Oh, hey, Zeke called. He says he’s flying over next week. Nadine’s staying in the States to finish her second year.”

“Shame,” Paige says absently.

“What’s that?”

“I said, I’m game.” Nick doesn’t need to know how poorly she gets along with his future sister-in-law. “When’s the match starting again?”

“About five minutes.”

“Guys,” Eliza says loudly.

Jaxon, who has up till now been lavishing on Terebell the most passive-aggressive pre-game pleasantries known to man, is trying to get their attention. When Paige meets his eyes, he crooks a gloved finger.

“Are we supposed to go over there?” Eliza asks dubiously.

Paige sighs. “I’ll go ask.”

When she reaches Jaxon’s side, he chucks her under the chin with the head of his cane. “Coach Sheratan has suggested we up the stakes of our match. What say you to _that_ , O my lovely?”

“Up the stakes?” she repeats, with slowly dawning alarm. This can’t be good. “Uh – Jax –”

Too late. Jaxon spins on his heel and squares off with Terebell, who now has the full force of her team assembled behind her: they’ve left off stretching and come to back up their coach, like the muscle squad they are. Nick and Eliza, both looking wary, come to stand beside Paige, and all at once the Seven Seals and the Rephaim are staring each other out on either side of an invisible line.

Paige is five foot nine – a very respectable height, nothing to sneeze at – but standing in front of these buff beanstalks, she feels pretty fucking short.

“Coach Sheratan here” – Jaxon gives Terebell a mocking, deferential little bow – “has expressed doubts at our ability to wipe the floor with her team. Her exact words, I believe, were … what were they?”

“I said that when we win,” Terebell tells them in a low voice, “I’ll have that cane, _and_ that tie pin of yours.”

The solid gold tie pin in the shape of a chess-piece rook. According to rumour, Jax won it off Didion Waite in a high-stakes game of Operation ten years ago. Paige hasn’t managed to wring any more details out of either Jax or Nick. All they would tell her was that it was a bloody, messy affair.

Maybe it was a _real_ game of Operation. She’s a little afraid to ask.

“This pin?” Jaxon pulls his chin against his neck so he can look down at it; his mouth turns down at the corners. “Absolutely not. It’s of sentimental value.”

“It’s tacky,” Terebell says curtly. “If you like, you may choose a trophy of equal value, in the unlikely event that the Seven Seals pull ahead. You have one minute to deliberate.”

Paige glances at the Warden, only to find him already watching her. Instead of looking away in embarrassment, like any normal person would do if someone caught them staring, he holds her gaze. A chill runs down the backs of her arms.

“Oh, I don’t need to deliberate,” Jaxon says smoothly. “You wish to mortify me by relieving me of my prized possessions; very well, humiliation for equal humiliation … If _we_ win – and I don’t say _when_ because I know humility –”

Paige and Eliza exchange an incredulous look.

“– _if_ we win, your player shall buy our player dinner.”

What?

“Agreed,” Terebell says flatly.

She and Jaxon shake hands. Both are wearing gloves, yet both look mildly disgusted at having to touch one another. Anything else they might have said is interrupted by a loud squeal of feedback from the commentator’s booth.

“GOOOOOOOOOD AFTERNOON, LADIES, GENTLEMEN AND HONOURED GUESTS,” Scarlett Burnish drawls over the loudspeakers. “WHO’S READY TO WATCH SOME PING-POOOOOOOOONG?”

The crowd shouts assent. Jaxon turns to the Seals, his expression dead serious.

“Time to choose our champion.”

Nick, Eliza and Paige each obediently stick out one foot into the middle of their huddle. Jaxon takes out his cane and counts out a schoolyard rhyme on their toes. 

“Sky blue, sky blue, everyone is out except – for – you. Congratulations, Paige. Kindly don’t lose me my cane.”

…

Paige’s opponent is, of course, the Warden. Because the universe hates her.

“Hi again,” she tells him, as they shake hands in preparation for the match.

“Pale Dreamer,” he says mildly. “No intimidation tactics this time?”

“Nah, you kind of took the wind out of my sails.” Mostly by being so polite and unruffled that it felt like all her efforts were going to waste.

The Warden inclines his head to her. “I apologize.”

Exhibit A.

They take their places on either side of the ping-pong table. He stands with his hands clasped behind his back, and as Burnish introduces them both to the audience, Paige contemplates the appalling visual dissonance of a giant like him getting ready to bat around a dinky little plastic ball. Eliza was right: the Rephaim should be in wrestling or swimming or Olympic discus throw, something heroic and majestic that makes use of all those pointless muscles. Jaxon proclaims on a regular basis that ping-pong is, without a doubt, the most heroic and majestic game of them all, but it’s not like anyone actually _believes_ him.

A hush falls over the arena. The Warden holds up the ping-pong ball in his off hand, ready to serve the first round. He looks Paige in the eye.

She gives him an awkward nod.

Scarlett Burnish counts down from three, and the ball hits the table.

…

“ELEVEN-TEN! THAT’S _ELEVEN-TEN_ TO THE SEVEN SEALS! THE PALE DREAMER WINS THE GAME; GIVE THEM A HAND, EVERYONE!”

Dazed, Paige puts the paddle down. Her eardrums are being assaulted by a dreadful mélange of noise: partly the crowd cheering, partly the blood pounding in her ears, partly Jaxon’s triumphant yelling in her ear as he picks her up and spins her around.

“That’s my girl, Dreamer!” he shouts, gleeful as a schoolboy. “We’re on to the finals, yes we are! I cannot _wait_ to see the look on Sheratan’s face!”

When he finally puts her down, she’s caught by Eliza and Nick, who hug her with such gusto that she’s left gasping for breath. “Nick –” Her laughter stutters as he claps her on the back. “Nick, I can’t breathe –”

“Oops. Sorry, _sötnos.”_ He lets go, still grinning down at her. “I’m so proud of you. They’re a tough team to beat, but you trained and trained and _you got better._ Even he” – this with a head tilt toward the Warden, who was conferring with his own team on the other side of the table – “can’t argue with that.”

“Right,” says Paige, her smile fading. “I beat him. So Jax gets to keep his tie pin and cane, and I have to …”

Nick grimaces. “Yep.”

“Maybe they’ll back out,” Eliza says encouragingly, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s not like there was a contract.”

Paige shakes her head. “If they don’t insist, Jax will.”

“How well you know me, O my lovely,” says Jaxon, appearing out of nowhere to take her by the elbow. “I will get my dues from Sheratan if it is the last thing I do. Come, darling, time to collect your prize.”

Paige, resigned, allows him to drag her over to the Rephaim. They’ve clustered together around the Warden and appear to be deep in a blow-by-blow analysis of the match; a few of them are giving him pitying looks. Yet the Warden seems to be bearing his defeat with good grace. He stands as tall and proud as ever, leaning close to Terebell so she can hear him over the noise of the arena; it’s impossible to tell from his expression if he even cares that his team just got kicked from the semi-finals.

Jaxon politely waits for a lull in the conversation before saying in a dispassionate voice, “Arcturus, I believe we had a deal.”

Terebell gives him a poisonous look, then mutters something to the Warden under her breath. It sounds suspiciously like, “Good luck.” Then she turns and walks away, as if brushing her hands clean of the matter.

Once she’s gone, the Warden – Arcturus – looks down at Paige with a glimmer in his eyes.

“You played well, Pale Dreamer.”

She takes the proffered hand and shakes it once. “Thanks,” she says. Then, because she feels bad for being so rude the last time, “Guess I must have loosened up.”

“Indeed.”

He frees her hand. Paige pushes a loose strand of hair off her sweaty forehead, suddenly hot in the face. Why isn’t _he_ as much of a mess as she is? Didn’t he spare any effort to beat her?

“I hope,” Jaxon says to him in a saccharine voice, “that there are no hard feelings, Arcturus. After all, there are lessons to be learned in every defeat, wouldn’t you say?”

“Certainly.”

“And what might you have learned today?”

Jaxon clearly hopes to mortify the Rephaite a little further, but Arcturus is unperturbed.

“That if I am to be rewarded for victory and defeat in equal measure, I should continue to bet against you, White Binder.”

With that, he turns and follows Terebell to the changing rooms.

…

Paige catches up to him outside the arena. It's easy to spot him even amid the crowds emptying from the massive lobby; he towers over them all. He’s standing under the striped awning, umbrella in hand, those strange tawny eyes fixed thoughtfully on the leaden sky. There’s a dark line on the pavement where the awning catches the rain, and his boots are lined up a precise ten centimetres away from it.

She comes to stand beside him, her freezing hands buried in her coat pockets.

“Hi.”

He glances down at her. “You are too late, I’m afraid. The other Seals have just left in a taxi.”

“I know. I told them to go on ahead.”

Pause.

“Listen,” she says. Her own voice is almost inaudible in the clamor of people all talking over one another, arguing and scolding children and waving down cabs, and beneath it all the steady drumming of rain. “You didn’t … throw the match, did you?”

Arcturus’s face betrays nothing.

“Why would I do such a thing?”

There is no humble way to say _because my boss bet yours a dinner date._ It would also be incredibly insulting. “I don’t know. You pretty well clobbered me the last time. I didn’t think I was _that_ good.”

“Then you are better than you think you are.”

He says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Magnanimous bastard. He was just as civil with her the last time they crossed paddles, when she’d challenged him with all the hubris of a sad, toga-wearing, epic-poetry-spouting Greek hero, and promptly been served her own ass.

“In that case,” she says carefully, “I guess you owe me dinner.”

“I suppose I do.”

He tilts his head back against the sky. Paige examines his profile from the corner of her eye.

“We could always falsify the evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“Yes. Photographic evidence. Jax’s idea, not mine.”

“Hm. And I suppose if he is not presented with said evidence, he will continue to hold the unpaid debt over Terebell’s head as long as he lives.”

“Longer than that, knowing him,” Paige mutters. Jaxon would love nothing better than to become a poltergeist and harass everyone for eternity. “I’m just saying we don't have to indulge his lunacy.”

Arcturus looks back at her with unnerving directness. She resists the impulse to ask if his neck hurts from craning it down at lesser mortals like herself all the time.

He says, “I would not force my company on you for Terebell’s sake.”

“No, I know,” she says hurriedly. “I don’t have anything against the idea, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay,” she says. “Great. It’s settled. I like spicy food,” she adds, almost without meaning to, “if – you know – you want to go somewhere with spicy food. Unless you have any allergies?”

He definitely looks amused now. “No. I have no allergies.”

“Good. That’s good.”

After another pause, Arcturus opens his umbrella and steps out into the rain. Paige reflects that he probably just decided to do the chivalrous thing and rescue her from her own babbling.

“I will be in touch,” he says.

She watches his dark figure retreat into the gray curtain, and when that fades, turns her gaze to a nearby tree with a full complement of bright gold leaves, shivering in the gale like something alive. It’s not a dinner she’s getting, she realizes, nor a date or even a chance to gloat over a rival athlete. No.

She is getting a rematch.

…

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are always appreciated!


End file.
